Lent: Heartbeat...
Go to your doctor, and one of the first things they'll do is listen to your heart. I don’t think about my hear that much. Maybe I should since, if it goes… I go.
The only time I hear my heartbeat is when I’m panicking, scared, alone, or after a long run. Something traumatic emotionally, or physically has to happen for me to notice my heart beating fast.
Lent serves as a season when we pay closer attention to our hearts. Often my spirituality can be reactionary… God, I’m scared, I’m alone, I’m stressed… help me. I need you.
Lent is pro-active. It permits space for me/us to search our hearts, listen closely and consider our condition. Heart attacks are too late. So are spiritual heart attacks.
And so I ask…
-- How healthy is my heart and what am I doing to keep it beating strong (where does my joy come from)?
-- What patterns are damaging my heart (sin, un-forgiveness, neglect)?
-- What corrective measures do I need to take (in my life, my patterns)?
I also hear my heart beat when I’m quiet.
And maybe that’s where it starts.
Help me really mean, ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening…”
posted by steve @ 12:39 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I like that description of Lent being proactive, not reactionary. My spirituality sits in the reactionary category all too often.
i read that somewhere on a website recently about lent being a time to search our hearts. I have chosen to give something up in order to guard my heart. Thanks so much for your encouragment.. It was a good reminder
another great thing during lent.. don't just give something up.. but in its place, take something on... a new discipline, a giving, a reading, a praying, that you weren't doing before. if it only takes 30 days to make a habit.....
So then shouldn't we begin (like lent) to shape our faith pro-actively rather than reactionally? I think this would change alot of the ways that we step into following Jesus.
Ash Wednesday
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice...
T.S. Eliot
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